


Maybe It's Worth It

by toyhto



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 1987 and 1988, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:08:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29081415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: A cycle of regret and a ghost of old love.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 18
Kudos: 42
Collections: RS Fireside Tales Vol.3





	Maybe It's Worth It

**Author's Note:**

> Written for RS Fireside Tales 2021. Thank you so much for betaing, ambruises!
> 
> Prompt:  
> 

Sirius came back in early December 1987, two weeks after the news had been on the front page of the Daily Prophet. Remus still had the newspaper. He had thrown it away and then fetched it back, folded it and left it under his bed, from where he had had to remove it so he could sleep. He had read the article at least four times, and each time, he only had more questions. He had thought about the funeral – there wouldn’t be one, he was almost certain – and about why the fuck he cared.  
  
And then one night, he woke up when the room was still dark and his head was heavy as if he was still dreaming, and Sirius was sitting by his bed. Sirius’ hair was longer than he remembered. Sirius looked older, too. And thin. And not completely real.  
  
“Hi,” he said. He had talked to Sirius a lot inside his head.  
  
“Hi,” Sirius said, watching him. “You don’t mind that I’m here?”  
  
“No,” he said. God, he was tired. In the dream before this one he had been back in Hogwarts, and everyone had been there, and he and Sirius had tried to make the tables fly, and then he had been in the bottom of the ocean, and then in the library, and Sirius had held his hand. Now he reached to take Sirius’ hand, but Sirius pulled away.  
  
So, this was that kind of a dream.  
  
“Did you hear the news?” Remus asked.  
  
Sirius nodded slowly. “Yeah. I heard the news.”  
  
Remus closed his eyes again. He didn’t like this kind of dream. It felt a little too real, and in the morning, he would only feel worse. “You died,” he said, looking at the shadows of light on his closed eyelids.  
  
“Yes,” Sirius said and then stayed quiet for the rest of the dream.  
  
-  
  
The thing was, by that time Remus had spent six years in a circle that, when he tried to think about it, felt strange and meaningless and self-destructive but also as if it had been imprinted onto his very being and one day would be the last thing left of him. He didn’t think he could live without it anymore, which felt like a bad joke because he couldn’t really live with it, either. The circle was made of regret and loneliness, over and over again, tightly woven together. He was lonely because of the things that he regretted, and he regretted that he was lonely. He shouldn’t have been. Bad things had happened to him, like bad things happened to most people, to some more than others, and he _didn’t_ think he was the saddest person there was, or rather: he only did when he was indulging his self-pity. He knew that and regretted it, too. But one detail in the regrets he had was that he knew that he was sad for the wrong reasons. His friends had died, and the one who he had thought was in love with him hadn’t been, and if he was a wreck of a human these days, it should have been because of the first thing and not the latter.  
  
When he woke up that morning, the first thing he remembered was that he had had a dream about Sirius again. Or a couple of dreams. But in one of them, Sirius had come to his flat and sat by his bed. He walked around in the flat with nothing but his pants and woollen socks on until he started shivering from the cold, and then finally he managed to find the newspaper. He had stuck it in the bookshelf between Edgar Allan Poe and the Oxford English Dictionary. He took the newspaper and went to the kitchen with it, and there he made coffee and read the whole article again. It didn’t say much about how Sirius had died. The writer was very detailed about the way Sirius had betrayed everyone, but the circumstances around Sirius’ death were vague as if it had happened for no reason, or rather, that the reason was too insignificant to bother with, such as when it rained. Remus sipped his coffee, but it was too bitter and the milk had gone sour, so he walked to the window, pulled the curtains aside and told himself he would have to wash them one day. They smelled of wine and dust. Outside, it was raining. The whole world was grey. Everything was like it always was. The old woman living in the apartment building across the street was hanging up her laundry. The orange cat was sitting on a windowsill. Remus closed the curtains and went to find his pullover.  
  
The days went like this. He woke up, he walked around in the flat trying to remember how to be a human, tried to shake off the feeling of the dreams he had had the past night, tried to tell himself that it was 1984 or 1985 or 1986 or, lately, _absurdly_ , 1987, and that anyone else would have gotten over everything that had happened by now. He had a job in the local bookstore where they needed him only three days a week and therefore hadn’t yet realised he was always sick around the full moon. He was always broke because he was working only three days a week, but it was better than not working at all. And he liked the bookstore. The woman who ran it didn’t ask him many questions. He had decided a long time ago that it was probably because she didn’t want him to ask questions about her, and so they were keeping up this mutual cover of silence that fit them both. Sometimes he amused himself thinking about what kind of secrets she was keeping. But maybe she just didn’t care about Remus’ life. That was certainly possible. He wouldn’t have cared either, only he had to live with himself every day. He regretted that too, and then regretted that he was a self-pitying idiot who couldn’t just get over himself and do what other people did, such as be happy or get laid.  
  
“I’m not having sex,” he said to Sirius when he was dreaming again. This time, Sirius was sitting on his bed and he tried to touch Sirius but couldn’t. His fingers kept slipping through. He had come to this dream through the bedroom in the flat where they had lived until 1981 when Sirius had betrayed him, and the sheets had been a mess and he had had the familiar feeling lingering still inside his skin, the feeling that someone had just touched him. Even in the dream he was well aware that no one had touched him like that in ages, and if he dreamed about it, once he woke up he would feel as if he had been carved empty in an exceptionally cruel way.  
  
But now Sirius was here, watching him as if he wasn’t quite sure what Remus was talking about. That was a little odd. Sirius always knew everything in the dreams. Sirius knew every sore place Remus had in his – he supposed, in his fucking _heart_ – because Sirius was the one who had broken it.  
  
Oh, god, now he was being a self-pitying idiot again.  
  
“What?” Sirius asked, watching him with narrowed eyes.  
  
“Come on,” he said, leaning up against his elbows. “You aren’t surprised. You always said I was being stupid about it.”  
  
“No, I didn’t.”  
  
“Yeah, you did. You always said something like, _Remus, it’s not like it’s difficult. Just find someone to fuck. There’re hundreds of people who would happily fuck you. Hell, even I would._ And then you laughed.”  
  
Sirius was quiet for a moment. Remus’ heartbeat was oddly sharp considering that this was a dream. “That was before.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“That was before we were…” Sirius paused and looked away. “Anyway, I was just being stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking. I was probably… I was trying to tell you that I wanted you but didn’t know how to.”  
  
“You wanted me.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Sirius, you didn’t want me.”  
  
“Of course I did,” Sirius said, looking a little offended. Sometimes Remus wondered why it was always like this in his dreams: Sirius was hurt, Sirius was offended, Sirius still tried to make him believe that whatever had happened between them had been real. As if Remus was incapable of facing the facts even while he was dreaming. “Remus –”  
  
“No,” he cut in and sat up on the bed, “no, but think about this. I haven’t slept with anyone since I was with you. And it’s been six years. Isn’t that pathetic? Like, anyone else, literally _anyone else_ would’ve just understood that you never loved me and moved on with their lives, found someone else, all that. But not me. And as you know, I didn’t sleep with anyone else before you either, so now I’ve really slept with just one person in my whole life, and I’m twenty-seven and far too old to change. And it’s not like I don’t _want_ sex, because I kind of do, it’s just…”  
  
“You’re wrong.”  
  
“About what?”  
  
“About everything, I suppose,” Sirius said. “But, well. You can still change. You have your whole life ahead of you.”  
  
“My whole life.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean anything. I can’t –”  
  
“Shut up,” Sirius said and touched his arm, which was strange because he couldn’t feel it. What he felt instead was his heart speeding up in his throat. “I can’t believe you’re actually twenty-seven.”  
  
“You are too.”  
  
“No, I’m…” Sirius shook his head. “Anyway, happy birthday.”  
  
“My birthday was in March.”  
  
“I wasn’t here then.”  
  
“You aren’t here now.”  
  
Sirius opened his mouth and then closed it again. He looked tired. “You’re wrong about the other thing, too.”  
  
“Really?” Remus asked. He knew he sounded like he wanted to fight but he kind of did. Sometimes he wondered if one of the reasons why he was dealing with all of this so incredibly badly was that he had never had a chance to talk to Sirius about it. When he had found out what Sirius had done, Sirius had already been on the way to Azkaban. There had been a trial, but no one had told Remus about it, and no one had asked him to be there. Back then he had thought it was kindness, but he wasn’t sure anymore. Maybe if he had seen Sirius even once, maybe if he had had five minutes with Sirius, maybe then he could have told Sirius how much he hated Sirius for doing this, and how much he hated himself for letting it happen, and how he would never in his life come to understand how Sirius could be so… so _empty_ as a person that he could do something like this. Maybe then he would have been able to get over it and move on with his life.  
  
Maybe.  
  
“What other thing?” he asked, because Sirius wasn’t saying anything.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You said I was wrong about something else, too.”  
  
“Yeah,” Sirius said slowly and then climbed off from Remus’ bed. There was something odd about the way he moved. As if he was acting. “I’ll tell you some other time. I think this is enough for now. You’re angry.”  
  
“Of course I’m angry,” Remus said, but Sirius walked out of the bedroom and disappeared. He thought about getting out of the bed and following Sirius, but these dreams never ended well, and he wanted to think about something else, anything, so that he wouldn’t feel so much like a wreck in the morning. He lay back on the mattress and closed his eyes.  
  
At some point he thought Sirius was sitting on his bed again. But at some point he thought he was standing on a cliff with a giant cat who was somehow also his mother. And at some point, he was in a train that was sinking into the sea and he tried to get out but couldn’t, and when the windows broke and the water rushed in, he woke up in the bathroom in Hogwarts. And then he really woke up and it was the morning and he felt stretched so thin he was kind of surprised he could still see himself in the mirror.  
  
-  
  
“Did you hear about it?” said Angie, the woman who owned the bookshop. “Sirius Black is dead.”  
  
Remus glanced at her and then nodded. She had the newspaper on the table and a cup of tea in her hand. It looked like today’s paper. Surely there wasn’t anything about Sirius anymore.  
  
“I just thought,” Angie said. “You’re of the same age as him. Did you ever meet him?”  
  
“Yeah,” Remus said.  
  
“Really?”  
  
He nodded.  
  
“Oh,” Angie said and then was quiet for a moment. There was a client wandering somewhere in between the shelves and the windows were clattering with soft rain. “What was he like?”  
  
Remus opened his mouth. He had a headache, and the whole day he had felt as if his pulse was too fast. “He was nice.”  
  
-  
  
It meant nothing. That Sirius had been nice – it meant nothing, and probably the only reason why Remus had thought it did was that he himself was so broken. He hadn’t realised that Sirius could be nice to anyone if he wanted to. Maybe it was a game to him. Maybe it was how he got people to like him, to trust him. And he had certainly gotten Remus. He had gotten Remus in every possible way during the ten years Remus had known him, and sometimes thinking about that still made Remus feel sick, even though that particular thread of regret had softened considerably over the years. Now it was more like a dull ache somewhere so deep inside him that he doubted he could ever dig it out. It barely surfaced anymore. Sure, he had wanted to believe that Sirius was nice to him because Sirius _liked_ him. Sure, he had wanted it to mean something. He had _needed_ it to mean something, because he had been so in love with Sirius and couldn’t help himself. He had let himself believe that he was worth it and that had been his mistake, but he had hated himself so much that lately, he seemed to have run out of hate.  
  
“Do you remember?” he asked Sirius when he found Sirius sitting in the armchair in the living room. This was his flat, the flat where he was living now and had been living since 1983, when he had pulled himself back together well enough to move out of his parents’ place and try to get a job and a flat in London. He had hated the flat at first. He had found furniture in thrift stores, he had gotten dishes and linen from relatives and had felt as if he was decorating a coffin. He had to be somewhere so here he would be, but his life was over, had been since October 1981 and there was nothing to be done about it, only to try to get through the day. But slowly he had begun to like the place. This was the place where he had faced the endless row of days and gotten through them somehow so far, and where he could be tired and broken and sad and lonely and less than a person and no one would see him at it.  
  
But now Sirius was sitting in his armchair, and there was no sofa, because there was no space for a sofa and also because he didn’t need one. He was always alone anyway. He walked to the window and looked between the curtains, and surprisingly, the scene was the same. Once he had had a dream in which he had been in this flat but when he had looked through the window, what he had seen had been the garden of his parents’ house in Wales, only there had been no colours.  
  
“Do I remember what?” Sirius asked, so Remus turned to look at him. His hair was long and messy and tied in a ponytail, and he looked like he hadn’t eaten much or slept for a week. Everything about him was too thin. He looked… he looked a lot like that one picture Remus had seen of him in Azkaban. It had been 1985. There had been an article about former death-eaters, the ones who were in Azkaban or dead or missing. Remus hadn’t been able to look at the picture of Sirius but he had saved the newspaper, and then later he had found it and cried and got very drunk and looked at the picture until he felt sick. Sirius had looked like he was in pain and tried to hide it but couldn’t.  
  
“Remus?” Sirius said. “What? What should I remember?”  
  
Remus bit his lip. What he was thinking about exactly was one evening in October 1979 when he had come to the flat they were already sharing, and Sirius had been there, slightly drunk and upset for some reason, which had later turned out to be that he had been a little jealous of Remus and Gideon Prewett, _which_ had later turned out to be a lie when Remus had found out Sirius had never cared about him at all. But in October 1979, Sirius had walked to him and grabbed his shoulders and shaken him and he hadn’t known what the fuck was going on, and when he had asked, Sirius had just kept staring at him until one of them had cracked and kissed the other.  
  
“What do you remember?” he asked now.  
  
Sirius blinked.  
  
“Of us. Tell me what you remember.” Remus took a deep breath. “Because I remember everything. Do you… do you remember when we kissed for the first time?”  
  
Sirius shook his head.  
  
“You don’t?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“You don’t remember when we kissed for the first time?” Remus asked. He didn’t want to feel so upset about this, it was all in his mind and surely it was a bad sign for him to be upset about a conversation that he was having with Sirius _in his mind._ He walked over to Sirius and Sirius leaned back in the armchair, staring at him. “You really don’t?”  
  
“They take those in Azkaban,” Sirius said. His voice seemed to be coming out of nowhere. Remus saw his mouth moving but his voice was echoing inside Remus’ head. “You know it. They take everything that makes you happy.”  
  
“But…” He closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them, he was still in his living room and Sirius was still there. “It didn’t make you _happy._ Why did you kiss me? Why the hell did you? If it didn’t mean anything to you, you could’ve as well –”  
  
“What the hell are you talking about?”  
  
“Why did you _do_ it? You didn’t need to _kiss_ me. I thought…” He had thought Sirius loved him.  
  
“I don’t remember it,” Sirius said in a stretched voice. “But of course it meant something. It meant everything. And I want to… can’t you just tell me?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Can’t you tell me? About how we kissed? Because I can’t remember, I’ve lost it, but I want to…”  
  
_“Why?”_  
  
He could see Sirius swallowing. He stared at Sirius until Sirius turned his gaze away, and that felt like a tiny victory. He walked to the kitchen. He could tell Sirius about how they had kissed, or about how he hadn’t realised what was happening, not really. It had felt a lot like a dream. More so than this one. He took a cup of tea he had left in the sink last evening, poured the tea away and filled the cup with water. The whole flat was quiet. He couldn’t hear Sirius, but when he glanced over his shoulder, Sirius was still there, watching him from the armchair.  
  
He could tell Sirius about how Sirius had dragged him to the bedroom saying something that hadn’t made much sense and that he didn’t really remember anymore. Something about him. Something about how Sirius had been thinking about what to say, and if he ought to say it at all or not, because he could break everything, couldn’t he, so easily, and what would he do then? But every time Remus had tried to answer him, he had kissed Remus on the mouth or, as the things proceeded, on the shoulder, on the chest, on the stomach, on the scar on his left hip that had then been still fresh and aching. He had let Sirius undress him because he always let Sirius do anything Sirius wanted. But he kind of wanted everything Sirius wanted, too. His mind had been hazy and his breathing too shallow and he had had to cling onto Sirius’ shoulders not to stumble on his feet, as Sirius had tugged his pants to his ankles. And he had only let go when Sirius had pushed him to the bed.  
  
There had been some kind of a conversation. ‘ _Do you want to’ – ‘what’ – ‘but do you really’ – ‘yeah, sure, but what’_ and then something about what they were going to do, and Sirius had said _‘please’_ , and Remus had thought Sirius would fuck him and had been frozen with how badly he wanted it and how scared he was. But that wasn’t what had happened. Sirius had wrapped his fingers around both of their cocks and had jerked them off clumsily and too fast and then collapsed on Remus and kissed Remus’ face all over and fallen asleep for fifteen minutes, and Remus had listened to his own breathing and prayed, even though he never prayed. He had prayed to anyone who would listen that this wouldn’t be the only time Sirius wanted him like this.  
  
Now, he walked back to the living room and told Sirius to fuck off. He wasn’t going to tell Sirius anything. He knew that they took a person’s memories away in Azkaban and he thought it was terrible, but surely Sirius didn’t have anything about Remus that he would have wanted to keep anyway. And at that point he began to think about how Sirius had never loved him and almost cried, and then he walked back to his bedroom and closed the door and did a locking charm and lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling until he slipped into another dream.  
  
-  
  
“Hey.”  
  
He opened his eyes. For a moment he thought he was awake, but then he realised Sirius was on him, only he couldn’t feel anything. He closed his eyes.  
  
“Remus,” Sirius hissed, and then there was a sensation as if someone was pouring lukewarm water inside Remus. He opened his eyes again. Sirius’ hands were on his face, kind of, but when he tried to bat them away, his hand went straight through. “I love you,” Sirius said. He sounded angrier than Remus ever remembered hearing him. “I loved you and I still love you and you’ve got no right to tell me that it didn’t mean anything to me. I can’t take it and I won’t. You’ve got no right.”  
  
“Get the hell off me –”  
  
“I know what you think,” Sirius said, leaning closer to him. “You think I let you-know-who kill James and Lily. And you think I killed Peter. Well, you’re _wrong._ ”  
  
He almost laughed. He had sometimes wondered if he was going to lose his mind, but still he was a little surprised that he could come up with something like this. _“What?_ ”  
  
“You’re wrong,” Sirius said, “wrong wrong wrong, it wasn’t me, it was Peter.”  
  
“No, it wasn’t. You killed him. Sirius –”  
  
“We changed the Secret Keeper. We didn’t tell you because we didn’t trust you.”  
  
Remus stared at him. “You –”  
  
“I didn’t trust you,” Sirius said, his face going blank. “I thought you were about to turn against us, so I talked James and Lily into switching me to Peter. But it wasn’t you who was the spy. It was him.”  
  
“Bullshit,” Remus said, but it was difficult to breathe, and he didn’t know if it was because of Sirius’ hands on his face or not.  
  
“You were spending so much time with Fenrir’s pack. And you didn’t look me in the eyes after you came home. And I tried… I tried trusting you, but then I thought… I loved you so much, you could’ve fooled me so easily, and I just couldn’t…”  
  
“I didn’t,” Remus said, his voice coming out breathless. “You did.”  
  
“I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to hurt you, that was the last thing I wanted, it all just went wrong and I –”  
  
“You’re lying to me.” Which meant that he was lying to himself.  
  
“I’m not. Remus, for fuck’s sake, you’ve got to believe –”  
  
“I’ve been alone for _six years_ ,” Remus said and sat up on the bed. He felt as if his chest was shrinking in. He tried to shove Sirius away but couldn’t touch Sirius, and Sirius looked like he was trying to grab Remus’ shoulders but couldn’t either. “You killed everyone I loved and went to Azkaban and I’ve been alone for six fucking years with this, you don’t have a fucking clue about how it’s been.”  
  
“I didn’t _go_ to Azkaban,” Sirius said, “they took me, I didn’t want to, and you don’t know what it’s like, Remus, don’t look at me like that, I can’t take it when you look at me like that, I can’t take it if you hate me –”  
  
“I don’t _hate_ you,” Remus said and pushed at Sirius with both hands.  
  
Sirius fell on his back.  
  
“I don’t hate you,” Remus said. He couldn’t stop to think now, not even though Sirius looked terribly surprised and almost happy and Remus couldn’t understand why. But this wasn’t real anyway. Sirius tried to sit up but he pushed at Sirius again, and now Sirius grabbed his wrists and squeezed. Sirius’ hands were cold. “I miss you like hell,” Remus said. He wasn’t sure if he was trying to get his hands free or not. He didn’t much care either way. “I’ve missed you for six years and I feel like I’m going to miss you for the rest of my life and it’s terrible. And I dream about you all the time, and I hate it, because it only makes it worse when I wake up. I still love you.”  
  
Sirius kissed him on the mouth.  
  
He shoved his elbow at Sirius’ chest, and then when Sirius fell on the mattress, he climbed onto Sirius and kissed him.  
  
He hadn’t touched anyone else in six years, and the only thing that he had left these days was that he could have his own hand on his dick and think about something like this: Sirius in bed with him, trying to get his clothes off, but he was in too much of a hurry for that. He pushed his knee in between Sirius’ legs and tugged Sirius’ pants to his thighs just enough that he could get his hand on Sirius’ cock. He closed his eyes but then he had to open them again, because behind his eyes was just the darkness and here in the dream he had Sirius panting with his mouth open, his arm wrapped around Remus’ shoulders and his other hand running down Remus’ chest, and the noises he made sounded like he was broken. Remus didn’t care. He took his own dick in his hand and jerked off as quickly as he could. He wished he could have pushed a finger into his ass but he didn’t have enough hands for that. Later, then. Later. Some other time. Some other dream. Some other -  
  
He came in his own hand and let go of Sirius’ dick too. Sirius was still there.  
  
“I wouldn’t have done it,” Sirius said, staring at Remus as if he wasn’t sure what he saw. “Think about it. I loved you. I was an idiot but I loved you and I would’ve never done what you think I did.”  
  
“Shut up,” Remus said and kissed him, and when he opened his eyes again Sirius was gone.  
  
-  
  
In the morning he climbed off the bed, walked to the bathroom and washed his hands twice. Then he made coffee and fried eggs, read the Daily Prophet, tried to keep his hands from shaking, wondered when he had last called his father, went to the window, looked at the orange cat on the windowsill in the opposite building, and turned and saw Sirius sitting in the armchair.  
  
He jumped and hit his shoulder against the window.  
  
“Listen,” Sirius said, staring at him. “I can’t deal with this anymore. I thought I wouldn’t… I suppose I should just leave you alone. But I can’t.”  
  
Remus walked to the kitchen and sat down. There was something wrong with his breathing. There was obviously something wrong with his head, too.  
  
“It’s me,” Sirius said. “I’m really here. Can’t you just… can you look at me?”  
  
Remus looked at him.  
  
“Thank you.” Sirius was quiet for a moment. “And if you could stop looking so… like you don’t know who I am.”  
  
“I’m going crazy,” Remus said.  
  
“No, you aren’t,” Sirius said in a frustrated tone. “Of course you aren’t, you idiot. You read the newspaper. I’m dead.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“It was probably an accident, by the way. At least I think so. That day is a little bit blurred.”  
  
“Sirius,” Remus said slowly, “you’re dead.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Sirius said and smiled but not happily, “turns out I couldn’t leave just yet. I feel like there’s something between you and me that we haven’t quite talked through. Like when I told you I would go get milk and then ended up in Azkaban instead.”  
  
“You didn’t get milk.”  
  
“Yeah, I did. But I forgot it in the shop because something else came up.”  
  
Remus grabbed the cup of coffee. It was empty now. The porcelain was cold against his bare hands.  
  
“And I’m not saying that I’m _glad_ that you apparently haven’t moved on with your life, like, _at all_ ,” Sirius said, and he sounded so much like himself that Remus was afraid he might start crying. “But I’m kind of glad. And don’t get me wrong. It’s terrible. It’s been six years. You should have at least tried to, I don’t know, get new friends. And maybe have sex with someone. Sex is nice. I thought we agreed on that. I don’t _want_ you to be sad, Remus, but it’s like…” He looked around. “It’s like you’re still waiting for me to come back.”  
  
Remus swallowed.  
  
“And coincidentally, here I am,” Sirius said, stretching his arms. “And I don’t know how you did it, but last night you could actually _touch_ me, and that was… that was like magic.”  
  
“You aren’t really here,” Remus said.  
  
Sirius hummed. “Well, I guess that depends on your point of view.”  
  
“You aren’t here at all. I’m imagining all of this.”  
  
Sirius looked at him for a moment and then stood up, walked to him and stopped right in front of him. Remus raised his hand. It was still shaking. He touched Sirius’ arm and felt nothing.  
  
“I’m here,” Sirius said.  
  
-  
  
He supposed he should talk to someone but there was no one to talk to, except Sirius, who was sitting in his armchair the whole day. The old Sirius whom he thought he had known would have never been able to sit still for so long. But when he said that out loud, Sirius laughed in a bitter tone and started talking about something else. And he talked to Sirius, because he couldn’t do much else: he couldn’t pretend Sirius wasn’t there, and he couldn’t leave Sirius behind and go out, and when he closed his eyes and opened them again, Sirius was just looking a bit more frustrated at him, nothing else. He talked to Sirius about his job in the bookstore, about how he had gotten this flat, about his father and then about his mother’s funeral, and then he cried a little and locked himself in the bathroom. But when he had been there for fifteen minutes, Sirius appeared, sitting on the closed toilet seat. He tried to hit Sirius but there was nothing but air to touch, so he told Sirius that Sirius shouldn’t do this. Sirius said he had been worried Remus might hurt himself. Remus said he wouldn’t do that and wondered if he was lying or not. Sirius looked like he was wondering it, too.  
  
In the evening, he told Sirius he needed to get out for a moment. Sirius asked if he minded if Sirius came along. He wasn’t sure what was the point, so he said he didn’t mind. It was a cold night so he took his warmest coat and tried to give another coat to Sirius, but Sirius just smiled and didn’t take it. Then he walked down the streets he had walked a thousand times, and Sirius walked next to him in silent steps. He kept glancing at Sirius and other people kept glancing at him. When they got back home, he dragged a chair from the kitchen to the living room and sat down in it so Sirius could take the armchair again.  
  
“I’m losing my mind,” he said, “or you’re a ghost.”  
  
Sirius looked at him. “I’m a ghost.”  
  
“You can’t be.”  
  
“I’m dead,” Sirius said. He sounded a little sad. “You know that. You read it in the paper.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Did you think that I’d just leave you here?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Sirius looked away. “Bloody hell, Remus.”  
  
“Did you mean it? What you said?”  
  
“Yeah,” Sirius said and frowned. “What exactly?”  
  
“That you didn’t kill them.”  
  
Sirius nodded.  
  
“But that’s –”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“That changes everything.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I don’t know if I’m supposed to believe you or not,” Remus said. “Maybe it’d be better if I didn’t. Maybe I’d stay a little bit more sane. But I feel like… like maybe I haven’t been exactly sane for a long time.”  
  
Sirius was chewing on his lower lip now.  
  
“But if that’s true,” Remus said, “you were there for six years for no reason at all.”  
  
“I’m not there anymore.”  
  
“I sometimes thought…” He took a deep breath. “I thought that it was probably hell for you. And that we shouldn’t… that we shouldn’t treat anyone like that, no matter what they did, and it wasn’t even just that, it was that I didn’t want _you_ there, I couldn’t bear the thought that you –”  
  
“Remus,” Sirius said in a quiet voice, “I’m okay now.”  
  
“No. You’re dead.”  
  
“Yeah, and with you.”  
  
Remus opened his mouth and then closed it again. _Bloody hell._ “But you can’t stay.”  
  
Sirius just stared at him.  
  
-  
  
“Are we still together?” Sirius asked. They were in bed. Sirius was touching Remus’ face.  
  
Remus kept his eyes open. He could almost imagine feeling it.  
  
“Because we never broke up,” Sirius said, “not really. They just took me away. And you… stayed. I know that everything’s different now, but if you…”  
  
“We’re still together,” Remus said. It made more sense than anything that had happened to him since 1981. It felt like a plaster on a wound he had been hiding like a rotten treasure for six years. “We never broke up. We just had a… a fight.”  
  
“A fight.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Yeah. True. That’s what it was.” Sirius smiled a little. “I wish I could touch you.”  
  
“Maybe there’s something. Like, a charm.”  
  
“Maybe we could fuck.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
“Yeah. What did you think? I haven’t gotten laid in six years. And you haven’t either, you idiot. You could’ve just found someone. Some lucky lad to bring home with you.”  
  
“Sirius.”  
  
“I’m not bitter.”  
  
“Come on.”  
  
“I’m bitter,” Sirius said, “but it’s not your fault. Not at all. I’m bitter about… I missed six years of your life, and now it’s too late, and –”  
  
“It’s not too late.”  
  
“It kind of is.”  
  
“We’ll figure it out,” Remus said. “I’ll find a charm. I don’t care if this is crazy. I’m not going to give up on you again.”  
  
“You know,” Sirius said slowly, “you had a good reason to. Everyone told you so. Dumbledore told you so.”  
  
“I still –”  
  
“I know.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“I’m sorry, too,” Sirius said and settled on the bed next to him.  
  
-  
  
He had thought he remembered everything but it turned out he had been lying to himself about that, too. He had forgotten the way Sirius looked at him when he thought that Remus was being an idiot, or a coward. He tried to tell Sirius that everything was different now, that Sirius couldn’t just make everything what he wanted it to be, not even now when he was dead. Especially not now when he was dead. And Sirius didn’t believe him. Sirius followed him everywhere and sighed with a sharper tone than before and stared at him until he gave up. He just wondered if he ought to have given up sooner. Maybe that had been his problem from the beginning. Maybe he should have just let go and let Sirius have whatever Sirius wanted, and everything would have been a little better.  
  
Or maybe he was still unfairly angry at Sirius. He wasn’t exactly sure how many days Sirius had been in the flat with him. Sometimes he still thought he was dreaming, but when he woke up, Sirius was there.  
  
“Don’t look at me like that,” Sirius said now with the same look in his eyes.  
  
“Like what?”  
  
“Like you’re thinking that we shouldn’t be doing this.”  
  
Remus opened his mouth and then closed it.  
  
“Tell me you don’t want it,” Sirius said, staring at him. “ _Tell me._ ”  
  
“This is crazy,” he said. He probably should stop saying that, too. Obviously, he had decided not to care.  
  
“And?” Sirius asked.  
  
“And –”  
  
“Why the fuck does it matter?”  
  
“It doesn’t,” Remus said, because that was what Sirius wanted of him, and Sirius was right anyway. It didn’t matter. And his heart was beating heavily in his chest and his left hand was shaking and with his right hand he was brushing his fingertips against his stomach, back and forth, not exactly caressing, not trying to make it feel good. Probably the whole point was not to touch his dick.  
  
“Well, then,” Sirius said, looking down and then back up again. Sirius was naked, too. The light was off because Remus had demanded it, but he had been surprised when Sirius had agreed without an argument. Or he had been worried. But he would think about that later. Now, he was sitting on his bed and Sirius was in the chair by the desk, not close enough to touch, and all he wanted was to touch Sirius right now. “Remus,” Sirius said in his softest voice, “come on, you’re safe, you’re with me. Just do it.”  
  
“I want to touch you.”  
  
“We’ll figure it out.”  
  
“This isn’t the same.”  
  
“Of course it isn’t,” Sirius said and licked his lips. “Come on. Look at me. Take your cock in your hand.”  
  
Remus did. Sirius mirrored him.  
  
“Yeah, like that, and now… now, just… slowly, and… don’t close your eyes. Look at me, Remus.”  
  
He did.  
  
“It’s going to be alright.”  
  
It wasn’t.  
  
“I’m here,” Sirius said.  
  
-  
  
“Remus, can you –”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Can you get on the bed? On your… like I’m going to fuck you?”  
  
“Like this?”  
  
“Yeah. And then, just…”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Can you…”  
  
“Just tell me.”  
  
“What if I… I’ll just stand there. I won’t touch you.”  
  
“Because I can’t feel it.”  
  
“Keep your hand on your cock. And can you… touch the back of your knee?”  
  
“My – what?”  
  
“Yeah. Or your thigh. Inside your… can you just move your fingertips there, like, slowly, like I would –”  
  
“You used to lick my scars.”  
  
“You’ve got new ones.”  
  
“Yeah. Now what?”  
  
“Patience.”  
  
“Come on, that’s not –”  
  
“Touch your balls.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Just –”  
  
“Like this?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’m –”  
  
“No, you aren’t.”  
  
“I’m going to fall on my face.”  
  
“No. Put your finger –”  
  
“I _can’t._ ”  
  
“Your finger in your ass.”  
  
“I thought we were doing this slowly.”  
  
“Yeah. I just can’t… you don’t know how you look, that’s… I want to fuck you.”  
  
“I’ll try to –”  
  
“I want to fuck you so badly. I can’t believe that you’re right _there_ and I can’t touch you, and you look like that, on your knees, as if you’re just waiting for me to… and I _can’t._ ”  
  
“I need a charm. I can’t do this dry.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“I don’t know why… why I’m always letting you tell me what to do, that’s just…”  
  
“Yeah, I know.”  
  
“Something’s wrong with me.”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I don’t know why you let me tell you what to do either. You were always better than me. But I’m fucking glad. I’m… can you push your finger in now?”  
  
“I think –”  
  
“And look at me.”  
  
“I can’t –”  
  
“Just look at me.”  
  
“And –”  
  
“And now, now you just… think it’s me. Slowly. And pull it out. And… yeah, that, and… carefully. No one’s fucked you in six years.”  
  
“I –”  
  
“Shh. You’re alright. Just keep doing that. You’re doing so well. You’re so good. You’re doing exactly what I want you to. And now, can you crook your – yeah. And again. And again. And… can you get another finger in?”  
  
“I don’t think I –”  
  
“Touch your face.”  
  
“I – _what?_ ”  
  
“Your other hand. On your face. But nicely. Like… do you remember?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Just keep it there.”  
  
“I can’t –”  
  
“You won’t fall. You won’t. Third finger.”  
  
“Can’t I just –”  
  
“A little more. Come on. Tell me you don’t want to.”  
  
“I love you. I –”  
  
“Thank god. I love you, too. You can touch your cock now.”  
  
-  
  
He had a dream in which Sirius fucked him. After, they were lying in bed, their legs entangled, Sirius’ arm under the back of his head, his arm squeezed under Sirius’ waist, already going numb. Sirius was touching his face with warm fingers. When Remus closed his eyes, Sirius pushed the tip of his thumb between his lips and into his mouth. Remus let him. Sirius’ thumb followed his teeth and then settled in the corner of his mouth, and he wanted to ask what the hell Sirius was doing but he didn’t think he could speak. And then Sirius pulled his thumb out and stroked Remus’ face, followed the scar on his throat, his touch still damp, pressed against the point where Remus could feel his own pulse beating against Sirius’ thumb, shifted closer and kissed Remus, and pushed his hand down until he could wrap his fingers around Remus’ dick. It was soft now. Sirius held it in his hand like he had been holding Remus’ goddamn heart probably since they had first met all those years ago. It had just taken them a while to realise that. And maybe it wasn’t good to lose yourself in another person like this. But he remembered once hearing something like it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, and he had disagreed with all his being, because firstly it had ripped him apart when what he had thought was love had turned out not to be, and secondly he had lost himself when he had lost it. Surely it wasn’t _better._  
  
But now he wasn’t so sure anymore. Maybe if he had a chance to do it all over again, he would. Maybe knowing what it was like to have Sirius hold him like this was worth the pain and he would choose it anyway.  
  
When he woke up, Sirius was looking at him. He reached his hand out to touch Sirius and felt nothing, except in his heart.  
  
-  
  
He made breakfast and Sirius was there, sitting at the table across from him. Sirius said he didn’t really _sit_ because he didn’t really feel the material world anymore. It was like pushing your hand through lukewarm water. He felt his own body, though. He didn’t breathe anymore but sometimes he thought he did, so maybe all this was just catching up slowly with his mind. Remus asked what his skin felt like. He said it felt warm. Like before, before Azkaban, before everything, when Remus had touched him impossibly gently as if he was something fragile and not a man who had been wanking to the thought of fucking Remus for at least three years by then. Remus laughed. He hadn’t heard himself laugh in a long time and it sounded weird. He asked if it had really been that long and Sirius said that it had been. They had had this conversation before but it didn’t matter. They would have it again. Sirius told Remus about how they had been drunk, sitting on the floor and listening to Led Zeppelin, and he had wanted to touch Remus so badly that he had thought he couldn’t breathe. They had probably been eighteen then.  
  
There was Christmas but Remus barely noticed. He went to the bookshop and he went to the store because he still needed to eat, and he went to see his father who asked what had happened. Remus couldn’t tell him. He left soon after, and at home Sirius was waiting for him. He got used to knowing that he couldn’t touch Sirius. When they had sex, his own hands on him began to feel like Sirius’. He tried to find charms but the best he found conjured up a weirdly shimmering cock for him to fuck himself with while Sirius watched. That wasn’t exactly what he had been trying to achieve. Sometimes Sirius asked him to slap himself on the ass or in the face or, once, squeeze the base of dick for so long he was beginning to think it would break him, and later Sirius asked if it was too much and he said ‘no’. It wasn’t. Nothing was.  
  
He fell asleep and woke up and fell asleep again and Sirius was always there, except that a few weeks after Christmas, he woke up in the empty flat. Sirius appeared two hours later. Then the next week, Sirius said he needed to go somewhere, he didn’t know where, he just had to, he thought he was beginning to forget what it felt like to touch things. He had his own hands clutching his hair while he said this. He was away for two weeks and then came back, and one night Remus tried to take his hand in a half-dream and felt his fingers entangled with his, but then it was gone, and maybe he had been dreaming it.  
  
Sirius went away again. And then came back. This time, he smiled more. He also cut his hair, even though Remus didn’t know how. And Remus started to think about days. He had forgotten about them for a while but now he was thinking about them again: all the days that were yet to come, and how he could face them. How _they_ could face them. Maybe Sirius would forget what it had been like to touch him. Maybe Sirius would envy him for all that he had: that he could breathe, that he could sleep and eat and stand outside in the rain and feel it. Or maybe Sirius would get tired of him. Maybe Sirius would find someone else. He would grow old and Sirius would always be 27, only not really. Or maybe Sirius would begin to think it wasn’t real. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe one day Sirius would regret everything and hate Remus for it. Remus would regret that he had ever had love when in the end it hurt so badly.  
  
And then again, maybe not.  
  
In December 1988, Sirius had been back with him for a year. Remus woke up in the morning and made coffee. Sirius was looking through the window. It was snowing. The orange cat was sitting on the windowsill. Everything was quiet but in a good way, including his heart. The coffee was bitter, but he supposed he liked it that way, because why else would he have been drinking it?  


**Author's Note:**

>  _'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all._  
>  Alfred Lord Tennyson


End file.
